'Harry!' Hermione greeted the Boy-Who-Lived at the entrance to the castle. He stood alone, lounging against the shadowy wall behind the doors, out of Filch's glaring range. 'Where are the others?'

'Neville's in the greenhouses - I think Sprout wanted to ask him about one of his Gran's new plant hybrids, and she's bribed him with that fertiliser recipe that he was after.' Harry's nose wrinkled a little bit. 'Ginny is on a date with Dean Thomas.'

'Dean Thomas?' Hermione asked sceptically, picturing the playful and none-too-bright Gryffindor. Hermione thought that Ginny would be a better match with Theo than Thomas, which was saying something because Ginny's brash attitude frequently chafed against Theo's quiet confidence.

'Yeah.' Harry seemed as amused as she was by the thought. 'Sirius and Anneken are meeting us there for lunch though, so we'll probably meet up with Viktor at some point too.'

Hermione hummed, allowing Harry to help her up into the carriage so that she didn't damage the hem of the lovely autumn robe with her boots. The pair of Ravenclaws already inside watched them with wide eyes, and the Gorlois duo were forced to discuss inane schoolwork for the entire ride to the village.

The carriages dropped them off at the station and they immediately turned right, heading into the less busy part of town where the shops were more interesting. Neither of them had a great need for chocolate or prank items, but obscure books and fascinating artefacts were more their style.

They spent a leisurely morning browsing through a rich selection of defence texts in search of any that might help Harry with the first task. Hermione had a whole list of reference texts that she'd owl ordered several weeks before, which they picked up in a neatly charmed bag that would neatly vanish them to it's twin inside the castle. After the bookshop, Hermione obligingly visited the quidditch shop to look at the newest style of seeker's goggles (with built in bug repelling charms!). If nothing else, at least she now knew what to get him for Yule.

'I've been doing more research…' Hermione finally began, as they meandered up the track towards the shrieking shack.

'Of course!' Harry laughed, before noticing her somber mood and quickly matching it.

'I think I've found an alternative to having you join the Sect.'

'Oh?' Her ward had picked up in her tone that her new solution wasn't perfect.

'It's… well, I found it in an old scroll from Egypt - very, very complex and powerful magic.' She bit her lip, recalling the complex hieroglyphics and lengthly incantations. It would take them a week to draw out the enchantment, and the ingredients were finicky too.

'Yes?' Harry eventually prompted, when she'd been in silent contemplation for several paces.

'Its… sort of the opposite of possession? We temporarily detach my soul and magic from my body, and put them in yours-'

'That sounds dangerous.' Harry interrupted.

'If we get it wrong, yes.' Hermione admitted, 'but if it works, you'd have my magic, to use as you need, until we perform the spell to put my soul and magic back in my body.'

Harry was silent for a moment and Hermione risked a glance in his direction. He looked distinctly unhappy, which was to be expected - she hadn't believed for a moment that Harry wasn't smart enough to realise just how serious the kind of magic she was talking about was. In fact, she suspected that the only reason soul magic wasn't illegal was because the ministry didn't even know enough about the branch to know to ban it.

'If we got it wrong… would you end up dead?' Harry eventually asked.

'I guess it depends what went wrong.' There had only been. Very vague reference to errors in the casting of the spell, and she strongly suspected that the author hadn't been too concerned about the fates of the subjects of his failed experiments. 'We could fail to detach my soul at all, in which case it would probably be fine. Or, we might not manage to reattach my soul, and then I would become a ghost but with all of my magic.'

'I don't like it.'

'I'm confident, or I wouldn't have suggested it.' She assured. 'The hard part is setting up, and we'd have as long as we liked to check and triple check that bit.'

Harry didn't look convinced, but he promised to consider it and they forcefully changed the topic to their potions homework.

The topic of the tournament and the first task was left firmly occluded away as they met with Anneken and Sirius at the Spotted Stool; a quaint little restaurant that nestled between two houses on a side street. It served a more refined clientele than the two larger eateries on the Main Street, and they found themselves almost entirely in the company of wealthy Slytherins, either courting or meeting with their parents.

Sirius waved them over exuberantly from his seat near the back, drawing the irritated attention of almost everyone else in the restaurant.

'You saw us on Thursday.' Hermione hissed, exasperated. Sirius had come in to put Harry through his paces in a duel, just in case the task wasn't as creature orientated as they were anticipating. He had a very different style to Hermione, and consequently the group of peers that she'd taught, so he'd proved to be a challenge for them all in the end.

They were at a table for four, which meant that Krum would not be joining them for some reason.

'Doesn't mean I can't be happy to see my Godson now.' The animagus pointed out, his nose wrinkling as Harry pulled out a chair and helped Hermione sit. 'And I can't believe you grew up a muggle and still don't find that demeaning.'

'It's not demeaning.' Anneken scoffed, without looking up from her menu. 'You try wearing a pair of heels and trying to balance, keep your expensive skirts out of the way of the legs, sit without creasing anything, hold your handbag and pull in a chair at once.'

'You shouldn't have to wear that kind of getup just to impress a wizard.' Sirius folded his arms.

'Very arrogant of wizards to assume we're wearing it to impress you.' Hermione observed, hiding her amusement. 'I'm wearing this one because I like the colour, and I like the way it moves around my feet.'

Sirius spluttered for a moment and the two witches smirked, before Anneken picked up the quill from the middle of the table and write her order on her plate in flowing cursive. She handed it to Hermione, who did the same, then to Harry who looked mystified. When the Lord Black finally pulled himself together enough to place his own order, the ink sank into the gleaming porcelain and vanished.

'So, have you finished your plan for the task?' Sirius asked, glancing at the two students. Harry and Hermione glanced at each other.

'We've got an idea… Can I talk to you for a moment?' Harry eventually asked. Sirius blinked in surprise, then eventually stood and gestured towards the door.

'Our food will be here in ten minutes.' Anneken reminded the two wizards as they made their way out. Then the older witch turned to Hermione. 'What was your plan?'

'There's two options, so far; either Harry joins the sect…'

'Or?' Anneken prompted. Hermione bit her lip.

'Can you tell me something?' The older witch nodded. 'When did Gellert go dark? I mean, was there a specific moment that he started using dark magic?'

Anneken's expression closed off slightly, but it was obvious that she'd reply even as she became reluctant. The cheerful babble of the other patrons made the moment seem to stretch endlessly as she toyed with her cutlery, before finally taking a heavy sigh and raising her eyes to meet Hermione's.

'You know as well as I do that dark magic is a very fluid concept. I never saw the disintegration curse that he used on Livius Lucan, but that was certainly dark. There's no use for a curse like that except for hurting someone. I wouldn't have called that the "turning point" though.' She drummed her nails against her plate - a lapse in etiquette that earned her a disapproving glance from their neighbours.

'He regretted that.' Hermione pointed out. 'He knew that it was wrong to kill Lucan, but he had no choice.'

'It was a difficult situation.' Anneken acknowledged. 'Berg mentioned that he was using the killing curse during their trip across Europe, to hunt. The ministry would call that dark, but it was the most humane way of killing those animals… we've both agonised over that very question for decades, trying to figure out if we could have prevented it.'

'And?'

'We were all so young - you weren't even in school yet and Gellert just barely, caught up in horrific situations that most adults never have to deal with. Gellert never handled it as well as you; if he'd gone to Hogwarts, he would have been a Gryffindor. He saw things as more black and white than you; he didn't see the flaws in the old ways, or the suffering of the people. He just saw an attack on his family, and the longer the conflict continued, the more he saw them as "enemy" rather than people.'

'He tortured Frau Fleiss, when she set the Wights on the coven.'

'I don't think that was intentional.' Anneken pursed her lips. 'I think he wanted to kill her, and that awful wand twisted it into something even worse. But if I had to pinpoint the moment that it all went wrong, it would have been that… Why?' The witch finished, a slightly sharp tone in her voice.

'Because I don't want to pressure Harry into joining the sect, but the only alternative is really, really dark magic.'

'Dark magic by the ministry standards, or by yours?'

'Both.' Hermione opened her bag, summoning a sheet of parchment with a flick of her fingers and passing it to Anneken, whose eyes widened as she looked it over. 'The ingredients for the ritual - red and white bone, blood, flesh of both participants, unicorn blood, belladonna, mandrake…'

There was a long moment of silence as Anneken finished reading through the list of ingredients that Hermione had compiled.

'Well, it's definitely dark… does it really specify that you need to sacrifice thirteen lizards?'

'Yes.' Hermione's nose wrinkled.

'It's dangerous too. These are powerful reagents, and soul magic… we just don't know enough about the effect this might have. There's a reason we performed the solstice ritual; a tainted or fractured soul effects your magic and reasoning.'

They fell silent as the two wizards returned. Anneken passed back the parchment, which Hermione carefully returned to her bag. As if it had been waiting for them, their food shimmered onto their plates and filled the air with the sweet fragrance of herbs and honey roasted meat.

'I'm going to join the sect.' Harry announced, ignoring the salmon steak in front of him.

'What? Harry-'

'No.' Harry held up a hand to silence her protests. 'I don't like that ritual; it's too dark and too dangerous. The sect… its a big decision, but I trust you and I'd rather that than the ritual.'

She bit her lip, torn. The last thing that Hermione wanted was to pressure Harry into joining the sect, but he was right; it was the best of two bad options.

'So when can we do it?' Prompted Harry, glancing over at Sirius. 'If we're going to do it, it should be soon so that I can get used to it.'

Hermione pursed her lips. 'We just need a ritual altar.'

'You don't need to visit the Barrows?' Anneken asked, surprised. 'Or gather the whole sect in one place?'

'No. The family heart is in the Barrow; we only need to go there if someone wants to join the family, or to inherit the family magic, just like any other family. Joining the sect is different; the other members don't really get a say, like they do in a coven, and the bond is less… circular.' She paused, trying to decide how to verbalise the way the bond worked. 'Imagine everyone in the sect is a leaf on a tree, the bonds between us are the branches and the High Priestess is the heart of the tree, at the base of the trunk. I can grow another branch and add a new leaf without affecting anyone else on the tree.'

'There's an altar in the forbidden forest.' Sirius put in. 'It's ancient; probably from the founder's days, but I'm sure you could clean it up in a day or so. It's far enough from the castle that nobody would know what you're doing either. I imagine Dumbledore would try to stop you.'

They decided that Sirius would take them there after lunch, then drifted off the topic and onto other matters. Lunch was exquisite, as was to be expected when Anneken was the one to select the establishment. Krum was apparently meeting with his manager in anticipation of Hermione's explosive interview coming out in the next couple of days. Skeeter had been contacting all of her allies and friends, both past and present, receiving comments and asking questions. They were expecting the article to come out any day.

When they'd finished their meal, they departed up the track to Hogwarts with only a small detour to buy chocolate from Honeydukes. It was a lovely, late autumn day, so the forest was flushed with bright gold and burning orange leaves that crunched beneath their feet and blew up in the eddies of their cloaks. The crisp breeze whipped cotton clouds across the sky and tugged at their collars, making Hermione with that she'd brought one with a fur hood. Harry, who'd chosen his cloak better, smirked at her. Sirius, who wore a thick, muggle overcoat, looked positively gleeful at their discomfort.

'You know, Gellert used to wear a coat just like that.' Hermione commented idly, taking great pleasure in the way that the smirk melted of Sirius' face. The Gryffindor took pride in how he shirked wizarding traditions, so he always hated learning that he wasn't as progressive as he thought he was.

Once they were inside the castle grounds, they hung an immediate left into the forest. The grounds were finally recovering from the presence of the dementors; hardy Scottish pines sprouted fresh pine needles and a tentative moss crept across the damaged ground. After Harry ended up knee deep in the slushy, infirm ground, they learned their lesson and cut slightly further into the surviving forest. The thick canopy of needles kept the worst of the undergrowth at bay, but they still had to clamber over fallen trunks and navigate hidden marshy patches.

At a particularly notable cleft boulder, they turned due east and delved deeper into the grounds, away from the borders of the muggle repelling charm and down the glen until the castle was completely out of sight behind a hill.

After half an hour of walking, the robe that Hermione had taken such pride in was covered in mud and she'd tucked the hem into her waistband and all of their cloaks had disappeared into her bag, with it's undetectable extension charm.

She almost walked straight past the ritual circle and altar.

The stones were so covered in moss that they could almost be mistaken for broken tree stumps and the altar had a fallen tree across it. The circle was quite small, yet two adult trees and a smaller sapling crowded into the space between the trees and the altar.

'You weren't exaggerating when you said it needed cleaning up.' Harry commented dryly, scrubbing some of the moss off the closest standing stone.

'That's okay… help me shift this tree? The most important thing is that the circle is still intact.' Hermione pointed her hand at the fallen tree covering the altar, wrapping her magic around it. Harry quickly reached over, linking their hands and magic and a moment later Anneken joined in, followed by Sirius' tentative magic. Easily, their combined magic lifted the rotting trunk out of the circle, snapping the bare, dead branches on the trees around them. Opening her eyes, Hermione carefully guided the log out of the circle, dropping it just outside with a heavy thud and a squelch of damp wood.

The altar was covered in several inches of springy moss; the kind with soft, star shaped leaves that held lots of water but fortunately peeled off in great, green, living slabs and left damp but clean rock behind. Once most of the altar was cleared, Hermione sat on the bare rock and crossed her legs, pressing her hands against the stone.

Testing a ritual circle was an obscure piece of knowledge to modern wixen; even in the 19th century, it had been rare to use a ritual circle. When they were used, it was normally one that had been used by the same family for generations. They knew it was intact, so there was no need to test it. In the 7th century, however, almost all magic involved the use of a ritual circle and altar. They were scattered across the country, and it was common for the wixen travelling with muggle armies to appropriate any they came across for their purposes on the day - or destroy them, if they didn't want enemy wixen to be able to use them.

Fortunately, it was a simple matter - all circles could be used to capture and amplify ambient energy. Solstice magic was the easiest to channel; it was powerful and easy to understand, but the reason they learned astronomy in school (even if Dumbledore seemed to have forgotten the art's true purpose) was to calculate the ambient energy on every other day of the year, when the sun was not the dominant influence.

Fortunately, they'd had astronomy only two nights before and the young witch remembered that it had been the third day of the waning moon and that Mars had been at it's perigee - the closest it could come to the Earth in the two planet's orbits. The red planet was rich in iron, which had a powerful repellent effect on magic. Like magnets with opposing poles, the ambient magic hated to be close to the planet and would flood to the opposite side of the Earth like a tide rushing towards the gravitational pull of the moon. Whilst most wixen weren't consciously aware of the turbulence of the natural magic, it was known to cause irritation, rashness and short tempers; hence why the centaurs associated it with conflict.

Knowing that, Hermione could coax the magic through the circle, where it would be amplified and could be used to perform a task that aligned well with the nature of the magic at the time. If it worked, the circle was intact. If it didn't, the only consequence was wasted time.

She relaxed, her magic relaxing with her like a great muscle, allowing herself to float on the current of the magic around her. It was more difficult to do that usual - like trying to float on your back in a choppy sea rather than a flat lake. The magic kept threatening to flood her entirely, but she knew that the more she relaxed and the less she fought it, the easier it would become. Once she was fully submerged, and the ambient magic raced through her, she slowly reached out. As if curious, the ambient magic seemed to shift, like she'd become a new centre of gravity. Without the circle, it would just tangle momentarily with her magic before leaping away on its quest to evade Mars. But the circle entrapped the magic, reflecting it back off an invisible barrier, letting more in but allowing none to escape. She observed passively as the magic rocketed around the circle, impressed by the efficiency of the stones as the power inside the circle quickly built. There didn't seem to be any obvious breaks or fractures in the circle - nothing that would adversely affect their use of it at least.

The second test was to use the gathered magic, ensuring that there wasn't a lingering taint on the circle or the alter from either previous enchantments, some flaw in the creation or an event that had happened inside the circle.

With Mars at it's perigee and the moon near full, the magic was chaotic and destructive. Lightning was the easiest form to manifest it in.

To her pleasure, the magic within the circle responded beautifully. It condensed into bright, hot light, crackling and sparking across the circle and zapping at Sirius' bronze buttons and Anneken's silver rings. It wasn't powerful enough to hurt, because they were at a weak point in the flow of the seasonal magic, but it was dramatic and proved that the circle worked beautifully.

'Was that a good sign?' Harry asked dubiously, eyes wide. His hair stood up like a puffskein atop his head.

'Yes.' Hermione laughed, feeling at the wild strands escaping her own braids. As she closed herself off from the ambient magic, the circle around her went dormant. But it was different - like it was sleeping now, rather than the lifeless rock it had been before, after centuries of disuse and neglect. She wondered if the change had been so apparent in the Gorlois circle after she'd used it to become High Priestess and Matriarch, or whether she was just more aware and sensitive now.

'It's an efficient circle, but we should probably remove the moss just in case and get rid of the dead leaves.' She frowned at the snowdrift of dead leaves against the base of the altar stone. They could be hiding all kinds of dead wildlife that could have a negative effect on a ritual.

'The trees could stay for now though.' Anneken observed, glancing up at the massive pine. It would be tricky to remove without damaging any of the stones.

'They could.' Hermione acknowledged. 'So we'd be able to perform the ritual in… did you hear that?'

There was a moment of intense silence as everyone listened for the unnatural sound that had shattered the silence only moments before, but only the squawking of disturbed birds carried over the rustling of branches in the wind.

'Was that… a giant?' Anneken asked dubiously.

'Too high pitched.' Sirius denied, looking around as if he might be able to see the cause of the noise.

'It came from over there.' Harry pointed across the circle and down the hill, towards the lake. Then, in true Gryffindor style, he clambered off in that direction. Sirius followed him, wand drawn, and Hermione shared an exasperated look with Anneken before raising her hand ready for a shield charm and following them.

It was easier to move downhill than it had been trekking up towards the ritual circle from the gates, but it was still treacherous. The ended up putting their wands away, reasoning that whatever was big enough to make that roar was unlikely to sneak up on them in the forest and that they needed both hands for climbing.

That almost proved to be a fatal mistake. They'd failed to account for the possibility that the culprit wasn't moving, and it was only Harry's quick reactions that saved Hermione from being fried to a crisp as a fireball blasted through the trees.

'The damn Fireball's got hiccups again!' Someone bellowed, and a moment later a crowd of wizards was rushing towards them, waving their wands to extinguish the fires that had ignited in the trees. Hermione recovered quickly, dragging Harry out of the way behind a large rock. Sirius and Anneken were already crouched in the gloomy space.

'Dragons!' Sirius exclaimed, peering out from around the rock as soon as the wizards had gone back the way they came.

'This is your fault.' Anneken hissed to Hermione. 'I did not have to hide in a single ditch, dodge a single spell, until a Grindelwald came back into my life. I am too old for this.'

'You missed it?' Hermione offered, before peering under Sirius' arm to look at the clearing ahead or them, where the fireball had come from. Now that she wasn't distracted by the treacherous terrain, she could see the glistening scales - silvery blue and glittering red, weighed down by chains. As they watched, a team of wizards carefully levitated a large wooden crate out of a thestral-drawn carriage. Once it was situated in a large, clear space, one of the wizards tapped it with his wand, then bolted. Behind him, the box expanded, bigger and bigger until it was big enough to house another dragon - quickly proved to be an accurate assumption when the wizards tore off the suddenly massive slabs of wood to reveal a spine-covered, black dragon. It was unconscious and one wing flopped sideways limply as soon as the wooden crate was dismantled. Rapidly, the dragon tamers attached massive chains to it's collar.

'They must be for the first task.' Harry had gone very pale, and once he'd processed his godson's words, Sirius quickly mirrored him.

'Well, I doubt you'll be killing them - that's a Chinese Fireball, and they're very rare.' Anneken offered.

'Maybe they have to harvest ingredients? Then use them to brew a potion?'

'Merlin… Maybe. Have we got any parchment?' Sirius retreated back behind the cover of the rock as the Chinese Fireball hiccuped another ball of flame into the undergrowth. Wordlessly, Hermione pulled out parchment and a self inking quill from her bag.

'Or I have to get past them.' Harry suggested. 'They use dragons to guard things, right?'

'Good point.' Sirius agreed. He'd started sketching the dragons and Hermione was surprised to note that he was actually a reasonably good artist. They'd easily be able to identify the other species from his sketches. 'Getting past a dragon is probably more exiting than potion brewing anyway.'

'We'll focus on both in your tutoring.' Hermione decided. 'I'll get Slughorn to go over dragon parts as ingredients and some of the potions you could make with them. Mordred probably knows a bit about fighting them - I think dragons were more common back then.'

'Welsh Green.' Anneken announced, her statement confusing until Hermione noticed that the dragon tamers had just unpacked the fourth dragon.

'Better hope you get that one.' Sirius pursed his lips, making them stand out brightly against his still pale skin. 'They're the most docile and commonly used in potions.'

'Circe!' Harry cursed as yet another great hiccup of flame barrelled past them.

'It shouldn't be too bad if you just have to fight it.' Anneken offered. 'I've seen some of what Hermione's sect can do, and she could definitely strike a dragon out of the sky with lightning.'

'If I could aim well enough to actually hit it.' Hermione countered dryly. The older witch scowled at her; obviously, Anneken had been trying to reassure Harry. 'But yes, I'm sure we can come up with something. We've got all week.'

'Right… all week.' Harry agreed faintly as the black, spiny dragon finally woke up and promptly almost trampled three handlers, then reduced several trees to ash in a blast of fire so hot that it was white.

'Well, better not be wasting that week then!' Sirius sounded falsely bright, clearly joining in on their attempts to reassure Harry. He tucked his sketches into his pocket, passed back the quill and pointed back the way they'd come. 'I suggest we leave in that direction, then give the dragons a nice wide berth on our way back to the castle!'